For a city that has struggled to maintain cycle lanes on its traffic-choked roads, the Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT) has plans to create Cycling Districts across Bengaluru in a phased manner. This, the directorate says, would encourage more people to cycle – be it to their workplace or for rejuvenation purposes, and promote the culture of cycling in the city.
V. Manjula, Commissioner, DULT, said that the first Cycling District will cover around 25 wards in and around the Outer Ring Road (ORR) stretch between Silk Board Junction and Lowry Memorial College Junction near K.R. Puram, Old Airport Road, parts of Indiranagar and Koramangala. Bengaluru Smart City Ltd., along with the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), will take up the project.
DULT has identified five layers for cycling with colour coding. They are: cycle to work routes: purple line, cycle to school routes: red line, cycle to transit routes: orange line, cycle to rejuvenate routes: green line, and cycle to shop routes (neighbourhood): blue line.
Crowd-sourcing routes
The DULT recently held a #MarkYourCycleRoute campaign, which was aimed at crowd-sourcing ideas and routes from enthusiasts and the general public. DULT received as many as 133 mapped routes from 109 people for various types of bicycle rides and lanes in the city.
Apart from the general public, CycleToWork has also given various routes with data after mapping rides from 156 companies situated in and around the planned Cycling District 1.
Ms. Manjula said that apart from crowd-sourced maps and data, DULT got inputs from Yulu, a bike sharing operator, for cycle lanes and on user preferences.
The routes that were identified by the public were marked or mapped using tools such as GPS visualiser, Mapunity Draw, Google Maps or tracking tools such as Strava and mapmyride. “Hence, they have been done with some expertise and professionalism, and are viable options,” an official said.
Bengaluru’s bicycle mayor Sathya Sankaran told The Hindu that colour coding of cycle lanes would help in easy identification of routes and also in way-finding.
“Such initiatives help in quick recognition of cycle lanes, which would otherwise be difficult to do using Google Maps or other webmapping services,” he said, adding that it would immensely contribute towards making Bengaluru a cycle-friendly city.
Smart City project
Hephsiba Rani Korlapati, Managing Director, Bengaluru Smart City Ltd., said that various stretches being developed under the Smart City project will have cycle lanes depending on availability of road width and demand. “Around 30 km of roads are being developed under Smart City projects. We are in the process of identifying stretches for cycle lanes,” she said.
Cubbon Park would get a few stretches of cycling tracks. “The stretches within Cubbon Park are yet to be identified. They will be designed keeping in mind children and senior citizens,” she said.
DULT has constituted a Committee for Cycling in Bengaluru (CCIB) to involve the government departments concerned, cycling enthusiasts and civil society groups to encourage adoption of cycling.
Bus priority lanes across the State
In an effort to promote sustainable transport modes across the State and promote bus priority lanes in urban local bodies (ULBs), Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT) has come up with ‘Cities on the Move Challenge – Where there is a bus, there is a way’ initiative where ULBs, along with public transport agencies, can submit proposals for bus priority lanes of minimum of 5 km within their limits.
DULT will provide technical assistance to the best proposals and they would also be funded.
Interested ULBs can register for the challenge. DULT would conduct a workshop on requirements after which a draft proposal is to be submitted. The draft proposal will be reviewed and a workshop will be conducted before the final proposal submission, which will have detailed drawings and cost estimate.
A committee, headed by the Commissioner of DULT, will evaluate the proposals, select the best one and float the tender by the first week of November.
More information is available at: http://www.urbantransport.kar.gov.in/notifications.html
